Doco of the Month: Island of the Hungry Ghosts PG

Join us for the latest in documentary filmmaking. We’ll be celebrating diverse voices and intriguing personalities, uncovering truths from the exciting to the uncomfortable, and – most importantly – sharing real stories from Australia and around the world.   

Living on Christmas Island, therapist Poh Lin Lee spends her days talking to the asylum seekers who are held indefinitely on the island. Her attempts to provide some level of comfort to people with a growing sense of despair and an uncertain future brings her own place in the world into focus.

Meanwhile, the migration attempts of these asylum seekers is contrasted with the natural migration of crabs on the island, who move in their millions from the forest towards the ocean.

As these two types of migration continue to be pushed by unseen forces, the local islanders enact rituals for the spirits of people who died on the island without burial, making offerings for ‘hungry ghosts’ who wander in search of a place to belong.

‘It's a potent, profoundly moving approach to an extensively covered subject. And it's a timely reminder that a society must be judged by the way it treats the desperate and vulnerable’ – The Observer

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